Improved Typing In Office Apps For Windows 8 Touch Devices

Typing on a virtual keyboard or screen keyboard on a tablet has always been a challenge. Yes, it is easy to type on iPad and we can type at considerable speed but as the tablet size decreases it becomes hard to type faster. Also a virtual keyboard takes a lot of space on already-small-size display screen of the tablet. So, typing using the virtual keyboard on a tablet for professional and quick work is not a good choice, however, while sitting on a relaxing chair in your home while checking out Facebook, Twitter then the fun of using virtual keyboard can’t be denied. In different scenarios different type of keyboard is preferred. Keeping this in mind Microsoft Office 2013 team has come up with many ideas to increase the user experience while the user is typing on the tablet. The user will have the ability to launch and close the virtual keyboard as per his requirements. In this post we will be discussing the traditional problems of using virtual keyboard, how user will interact with Office on tablet computers and how the latest improvements in the virtual keyboard can help the user in using Office on tablet devices.

As you might have came to know about the Windows APIs for apps to enhance user experience on touch enabled devices in my previous posts. It have helped the Office a lot in improving itself. Office also used these APIs to facilitate user in typing efficiently while using any Office apps.

One of the major problems of using virtual keyboard on the tablet computer is that whenever we invoke the keyboard (or it starts on its own) then often it appears on the top of cursor, covering the text line where we were writing. So, we have to manually scroll down to get rid of this problem. In latest Office this problem has been well troubleshooted. In Office, now whenever the virtual keyboard pops up and it is on the top of the cursor then Office scrolls down automatically to make the cursor visible to the user. Also if you start typing and the cursor goes below the virtual keyboard then Office also scrolls down to make cursor visible. Office makes sure that the cursor is not below the virtual keyboard. Very nicely done.

Another problem that only Office was going to face is that virtual keyboard + Office ribbon leaves very little space for the user to work on. For example, if we are going to work on a document in Microsoft Word then probably we will write using the virtual keyboard. With virtual keyboard at the bottom and ribbon at the top there leaves very little room for the user to look at the document and edit it. In order to get rid of this problem Office teams make it default in office to collapse the ribbon on Microsoft tablet. This will leave a nice room on the screen and user will be able to edit the document in a little more open space. There is also an option for full view so that user can focus more on typing in clean environment.

Omar Tariq Jutt is a professional tech blogger with a lot of experience in writing Tech articles. He is a Ubuntu user and keeps a sharp eye on tech updates. Currently he is studying software engineering and sees his future as a web entrepreneur.